The Committee were provided with a presentation on the Outturn of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures.  The presentation can be viewed via the following link: (Public Pack)Supplementary Document - Presentations Agenda Supplement for Housing Services Cabinet Committee, 11/09/2024 19:30

The Head of Neighbourhood Services ran through the presentation and highlighted that:

• Members were informed that the Tenant Satisfaction Measures were introduced after the regulatory reform, as part of the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023.  One of the key requirements was for the collection and use of data on tenant satisfaction in relation to repairs and other relevant issues.
• The measures were managed by the Regulator of Social Housing and set to assess how landlords were performing through comparison nationally with a ranking.  The process was very transparent, giving customers an insight into how the authority was performing against other authorities.
• The key areas assessed by the measures were:

o   Overall satisfaction

o   Repairs and maintenance

o   Safety checks

o   Communication

o   Complaint handling

o   Tenant involvement

• Findings were required to be published on the Council's website and in various publications across the borough.
• There were 22 measures specified by the regulator, which appeared as questions in a survey, 10 of which were data measures and 12 were tenant perception measures.  The tenant perception questions were prescribed by the regulator and could not be amended.  The Head of Neighbourhood Services referred to a link within the presentation for further detail of the 22 measures.  This link was https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6321e7738fa8f51828b8306b/15739_RSH_TSM_Updates_Sept_22_Digital_AW.pdf
• Surveys were sent to all Council tenant in the borough to obtain as many responses as possible.  One survey was permitted per household.  In the recent survey a data sample was achieved of approximately 22% of tenants, which was considered a good customer base.
• The results from the first year’s survey were encouraging with the overall customer satisfaction at 75.4%.  Compared to other authorities in Kent this was the highest score.
• It was note that of the 12 questions, 10 were in the upper end of the median quartile and this is a promising position at the end of the first set of TSM’s; it puts the Council in a positive position on which to improve in future years.  2 questions were highlighted as scoring in the lower quartile.  These were, ‘satisfaction with complaint handling’ at 29.6% and ‘satisfaction with landlords handing of antisocial behaviour’ at 54%.  These scores were on par with other authorities, but action plans were in place to improve these scores moving forward.
• The survey would take place annually with the next reporting of survey data in June 2025.  This time an external provider would be collecting the data on behalf of the authority.   This was decided due to the large resource implication for the team and to give an impartial external view of the data.

The Chair invited Member questions:

• Members commended the report and the presentation of the data.  They felt the work should be used across the authority as an organisational working tool for future presentations of data.
• Members welcomed the identification of the two areas for improvement, in which progress in these areas, would make a big difference to residents, offering the emotional support required for such issues.
• Members queried whether feedback was requested after each repair was carried out to capture levels of satisfaction.  The Head of Housing Assets advised that simple surveys were completed on the phone for 30% of the appointments carried out per week. Also, for every appointment, once complete the tenant received a text message with a link to leave comments and rate the engineer out of 5 stars and leave any additional comments. 

The Committee noted the presentation.